Over the past decade, there has been a substantial increase in the use and deployment of wireless devices, from dual-mode smartphones to tablet devices. With “wireless” becoming the de-facto medium for network connectivity among users, it has become increasingly important for certain wireless devices, such as access points (APs) for example, to share state information and remain in synchronous operation with each other. This allows users to maintain seamless connectivity with a particular distributed wireless network.
Currently, distributed wireless networks are generally implemented with a centralized controller that manages the sharing and storage of state information among the networked APs. However, controller-based wireless networks possess certain challenges: (1) single point of failure; and (2) scalability. In fact, as more and more wireless devices are purchased and used by consumers, in some cases where multiple wireless devices (e.g. phone, laptop, tablet, etc.) are used simultaneously by a single user, network scalability has become a challenge. To address increased capacity requirements for the network, more expensive and powerful controllers are typically needed, thereby increasing overall network costs.
Furthermore, if shared state information is only relevant for localized decisions (e.g. Adaptive Radio Management “ARM” channel allocation), it may not be necessary to share this state information with the centralized controller. Thus, by uploading such information to the controller unnecessarily, network bandwidth is being wasted. However, requiring the APs to discern what shared state information is or is not relevant for global decisions would greatly increase the operational complexity of the APs.
In lieu of controller-based wireless networks, controller-less wireless networks may be deployed. With such deployment, however, it is imperative to solve the complex challenges of sharing state information within a distributed network to optimize network functionality.